


Blackest Night (flicker of light)

by thechavanator



Series: Savior Complex [1]
Category: Dragon Quest XI
Genre: Gen, Mute Hero | Luminary (Dragon Quest XI), eleven is not having a good time, spoilers up through act2 dundrasil, this game is really mean to him and i don't think i'm helping, well uh. this is act 2 dundrasil technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thechavanator/pseuds/thechavanator
Summary: Everyone who cares about the Luminary, it seems, is doomed to suffer.Especially, claims a part of his mind that’s been growing ever since Yggdrasil, since Heliodor even, if they care about Eleven.Eleven's insistence on helping everyone, regardless of the situation's ties to his mission, gets him into a rather tight spot in the ruins of Dundrasil.





	Blackest Night (flicker of light)

**Author's Note:**

> You know, I stopped using my laptop last year because it kept suddenly yelling about the fan whenever I started it up. But I booted it up today because trying to post this on my laptop was Painful and now it's...fine? Fanfic saved my laptop.
> 
> I charged through Acts I and II, like, last week, originally because I wanted to knock it out before the switch port, but then Yggdrasil happened, and then THIS ARC HAPPENED, and my brain went "this is your new favorite thing and you now have the hottest take on best character in the game." I don't know how this happened.
> 
> This fic was originally a characterization warmup (lmao) for an AU thing I have in mind (because getting a spooky sword with no fanfare after you beat the final boss is TERRIFYING, Jesus Christ, I haven't played much at all of act II and I am Afraid, and also have already cried), but after getting partway through writing this I went...hm, I should do more stuff in canon, considering...this take.
> 
> In case it's not clear, Erik acted as Eleven's interpreter over the course of Act I (Gondolia was fun), and Hendrik took over when Eleven made it to the Last Bastion.
> 
> (The title - well, the last half - was inspired by Lifelight, the lyrics of which have become oddly more apropos the more I play of this wonderful, tragic game.)

Erik often said Eleven had a savior complex, especially after the whole Gondolia thing.

Eleven would like to argue with him on that, but he _is_ currently stopping in Dundrasil to investigate/save some stranger, so he really doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Plus, Erik’s...not here, he finishes. 

He doesn’t want to think about the alternative.

He’s currently traveling with Hendrik, Rab and Sylv, which isn’t really his ideal party; Sylv is fine, he’s a dear, but Eleven still hasn’t really adjusted to Hendrik not trying to hunt him down, and Rab...well.

Jade is- _was_ better about it, even if she tried to coddle him too much, but Rab still sees the little Prince of Dundrasil, as far as Eleven can tell.

Dare he say it (well, think it), he’d rather Rab just treat him like the Luminary. Everyone else does, nowadays, if they notice him at all.

The four make their way into the ruins to save that goddessforesaken soldier from his “prison of despair,” or whatever that voice had said. Rab points out a secret path into the castle (Rab seems far too excited to be here, honestly. He always has had his head stuck in the past) and they venture onward.

Eleven feels on edge here, and it doesn’t help that the little pin-prick scars around his heart are aching again. 

Not for the first time, he wonders how in Erdrea he managed to make it out of the wreckage of Yggdrasil.

“Did the monsters get ye outside, laddie?” Rab’s voice rings out through the ruins, alarmingly loud against the quiet thuds of their footfall, and Eleven realizes that he wasn’t doing as good a job of hiding it as he had hoped. “I can heal ye up in a flash!”

Eleven fervently shakes his head no. He’s unfortunately aware of where Rab’s hands have been. He can’t unsee the magazine. He knows.

“Are you quite sure you’re alright, Luminary?” Hendrik asks, and Eleven knows he’s trying, he really does, but Eleven isn’t the Luminary anymore, even if that Seer said he never lost his powers. He can’t summon lightning anymore; now he’s just Eleven.

“ _Please don’t_ -“ he starts signing, but he shakes his head. “ _I’m fine. Don’t worry about me._ ”

Hendrik gives him a Look, almost like one Serena would give when Erik would translate something like that on his behalf. (But she’s gone too, because of him.) He backs off.

They press onward; sure enough, there’s a lone Dundrasilian knight under there. It’s not terribly hard to defend themselves when he charges at them, even if Rab and Hendrik have to keep tossing Moreheals at Eleven, because of course Eleven is struggling to stay on his feet. 

The Luminary could stand up to fights like this, but he’s just Eleven now.

The knight is still on his feet, just too exhausted to keep fighting. Eleven can hear him, murmuring to himself: “You took my Eleanor...my Eleven...”

 _Oh, thank the goddess, I can point to this the next time Rab tries to call me my birth name_. Eleven feels vindicated for about half a second before it kicks in: oh, that’s his dad. He’s still alive?

He leans in closer to catch more of what his father is saying, tries to look at him in some sort of morbid curiosity, but suddenly the world goes topsy-turvy and he can just barely hear his companions calling his name before everything goes dark.

The world suddenly brightens up again (the echo of a growl plays in his mind, but he can’t quite remember hearing it), but he is definitely not in the ruined tunnel. No, this place is bright and vivid and happy, bursting with people from the finest walks of life (probably the kind who would have looked down on him before they found out he was the Luminary), and when he looks down at his hands, somewhat transparent and definitely glowing, he knows exactly where and when he is: this is the night Dundrasil fell. (Because of him, again.)

What exactly is he supposed to do here? He can’t exactly change history, at least not in any way that would save Dundrasil, and especially not with the way everyone was acting as if he wasn’t there.

It doesn’t matter. He doubts anyone here could understand him, anyway. (Did they know, or was his voice stolen from him when the castle fell?)

He beats King Irwin—his father, he corrects—to the queen’s chambers (he can’t bring himself to call her his mother, it feels like a betrayal of Amber) and sees a young Jade fussing over...himself? That’s _weird_ , weirder perhaps than talking (well, signing) to his younger self, back before he’d seen Cobblestone in all its ruined splendor.

“I just hope he grows up to be like his father.” The queen’s voice rouses him from his thoughts.

“I hope he grows up to be nice and kind like you, Lady Eleanor!” Jade replies. He can’t quite bring himself to smile at the sentiment, preceded as it was by the Luminary thing and followed by a peal of thunder that leaves Jade and Eleven both more than a bit spooked.

No one ever seemed to notice him jolt backwards in panic whenever his Luminary powers were set off. They always saw what they wanted to, he supposes.

His father finally makes it in; babies change hands, and Irwin makes some comment about scary old men that leaves Eleven smiling for the first time since...well, since Sylvando’s parade, but that was a special case.

It reminds him a bit of Chalky, and his heart aches for reasons beyond claws and leaves and a power that probably should have gone to someone else in the first place.

He watches Irwin ruffle Jade’s hair, and he thinks he understands her a bit more too; he knew that she saw Eleanor as sort of a replacement mother, but watching his father talking to her, he thinks that the whole family was close to her. Closer than her father, at least. 

When had Carnelian stopped being her father and become the monster everyone now expected the Luminary to take down? Had he ever truly been himself?

He follows his father into the Colloquy, uneasy and uncomfortable even if he’s (probably) in no danger here. Carnelian’s eyes are almost burning into him.

It’s surreal hearing them talk about him as if he isn’t there. Which, technically, he both is and is not. Carnelian and Gustaf (Frysabel’s father, king of Sniflheim, gone before Eleven even dreamed of the world outside Cobblestone) talk of poems and prophecies, and he can see where exactly the whole Darkspawn thing came from.

Good to know he would have been hunted by two kingdoms.

The thunder startles Eleven again, both infant and grown. (Some things never change, it seems.) He thinks he sees Irwin glance his way; surely he imagined that?

And there’s the talk of offing him, on the topic of things not changing. He wonders: had the monsters not come, would he have fallen?

Everyone seems to forget that Eleven’s not just the Luminary. (He’s not even that anymore.) He’s barely an adult, barely really had time to think before he was thrust out of the village to fulfill his destiny. (And then he didn’t.) Chased across the continent, across the _world_ , by a bunch of soldiers who didn’t think to question their king. (And in some twisted way, he does wonder if he’s the Darkspawn after all; he did bring about the end of the world, even if it was unintentional.)

He’s sure he knows how this goes. If Irwin had to choose between his child and the fate of the world, Eleven knows exactly what he’d pick. He can almost see the glint of his father’s sword, drawn from its sheath and swung at Eleven’s oblivious-

“The child is a force for good, I have never been more certain of anything.”

His father’s words break Eleven’s entire anxiety spiral. He’s glad no one else in the party is here to see.

The Luminary is supposed to be made of stronger stuff than this. He shouldn’t be crying over someone not wanting to kill him.

As Eleven wipes the tears from his eyes, Carnelian...claps? “If you had shown even a whit less conviction, we’d have no choice but to remove him from your care.”

Wait. So this was...

A test?

No one at this table wanted him dead. They wanted him safe too, even Carnelian. Goddess, the whole “send him to Heliodor” thing sprung from wanting to _train_ him.

The sultan chimes in, glad that everything has been resolved, and it occurs to Eleven just how little he had spoken over the course of the argument. He always had seemed more than a little…self-focused.

It figures that he’d be the only one at this table still left unscathed by Mordegon, by time, by whatever else came Erdrea’s way.

Everyone who cares about the Luminary, it seems, is doomed to suffer.

 _Especially_ , claims a part of his mind that’s been growing ever since Yggdrasil, since Heliodor even, if they care about _Eleven_.

As the meeting comes to a close, the monsters come pouring in. 

Carnelian and Rab fend off the monsters long enough for Eleven and his father to find Eleanor and Jade, for Irwin to hand off the baby to the pair of them. Eleven follows them down, down, down, into a familiar tunnel, but the monsters have found them there too.

He knows how this story ends, but it doesn’t make it any easier, and he can’t just watch his father die like this. Even if this is a memory, even if the outcome is doomed to be the same, Eleven can’t just leave him to suffer. 

Okay. Maybe he does have a savior complex.

They fight off the monsters, together; Irwin looks stunned when a few drop dead seemingly of their own accord but shakes it off quickly.

Eleven’s blood runs cold when he hears Carnelian’s voice. _It’s a trap_ , he wants to say, _just run, find Jade and Eleanor and go_!

But even if his voice did work, he was all but a ghost here.

Irwin runs, because savior complexes are apparently a Dundrasil royal family trait, and Eleven follows, because what else can he do?

Carnelian is here, alright, but so is Mordegon (and goddess above, does Eleven want to take him out right then and there, even as his heart aches so painfully that he’s almost doubled over), and in a cloud of darkness and one wicked smile, he’s gone. Eleven knows, now, what happened to him.

He wishes he could unsee what happens to his father. He wishes he could explain it all to this younger Hendrik, convince him that Carnelian isn’t in his right mind, but he is but a ghost here, and who would listen to this village kid who had one job, and couldn’t even do it right?

His father believed in him, but his father was wrong. Everyone was wrong.

The world brightens and brightens, in great contrast to his mood, before it darkens again and Eleven finds himself in a void of near-nothingness. The only things he can see are his father and a strange purple beast calling itself the Gloomnivore, presumably the thing keeping his soul tethered here.

The way it speaks of Irwin, as if he’s some fancy five-course meal, sends chills up Eleven’s spine, and as it mentions “moving on” to its next meal, he feels incredibly stupid.

It was a trap. Of _course_ it was a trap. He was just too naive to realize that until he’d gotten caught.

(There’s a part of his soul, deep down, that notes that everyone else was onboard, but it sounds too much like his mom, trapped for months in the Heliodor dungeons because of him, like Erik and Serena and Jade and even Veronica, all gone because he wasn’t strong enough.)

His heart aches, again, as it always does when he looks at the devastation in Erdrea. 

The beast perks up a bit. “Hm, how does your despair compare?” It asks, and Eleven winces, staggering backwards as it roars at him and everything fades to darkness once more. 

Flashes of memory come to his eyes; the devastation of Dundrasil (because of him), the ruins of Cobblestone (him again), Erik captured in Gondolia (speechless again, goddess above why don’t more people know sign language) ...every single instance of the people around him calling him Luminary, not even his name, even after Erik made a point of it. Of the villagers seeing his powers present themselves and all but throwing him out of Cobblestone (you’re the Luminary now, he remembers thinking, your life isn’t your own anymore). Eventually, it settles on—what else? —Yggdrasil.

Watching his friends (companions, that dark part of him says, they were never your friends, Eleven) fight a battle they could never win, knowing the instant Jasper arrived that they had lost...losing his Luminary powers to Mordegon was really the least of it. 

The Gloomnivore is right; he _is_ pathetic. He’d known that for a long time.

 _What’s the point of even_ pretending _to try anymore_ , he wonders. The only person who can save the world gave Mordegon the key to destroying it. It’s a lost cause.

Yeah, maybe it’s better to just...sleep. This is fine.

Maybe Rab can keep trying to fight against Mordegon, even if it’s of no use. Sylvando can go back to his parade, Hendrik can go back to Cobbl—the Bastion...everyone can spend what’s left of their time making the best of it, rather than wasting it on a suicide mission.

“Luminary…Eleven…can you hear me...” a voice echoes in his mind, faint even in the quiet of his head. It’s strange, it sounds not quite like one voice; it’s Erik, Veronica, Serena, Sylv, Rab, Jade, Hendrik, even his mom and Gemma, all wrapped into one.

He’s heard this voice before. How did the Seer reach him here?

There they go again, about that light Eleven has inside him. Don’t they know it’s of no use? He can’t do the lightning thing anymore (not that he really did in the first place, fear of thunder and all), and even if he can still see memories through Yggdrasil, surely that’s just what’s left of the tree begging for help, right? And this, watching Dundrasil, saving his father, that was all a trap.

But...Hendrik didn’t seem able to see anything through that root in the castle until Eleven touched it.

Maybe...maybe the Seer is right after all? Maybe if he...

It is suddenly a lot brighter in this void.

When he next opens his eyes, he’s back in the ruined tunnels, blinking back the spots in his eyes. A chorus of “Eleven!” greets his ears.

He can’t remember them ever calling him by his name.

“Honey, we were worried sick!” Sylvando gushes, feathers fluttering behind him (he refused to take off his parade costume). “You vanished into thin air! Are you doing okay, darling?”

Eleven turns to them, nodding; he flashes a quick _I’m okay_ sign at them, just for good measure. (It’s one of the few signs they’ve all picked up, aside from forge and shopping and monster, and their own name signs of course.)

In another flash of light, the Gloomnivore appears, grumping about its interrupted meal. His companions—friends, he corrects—grab their weapons, Hendrik steps in front of him, and Eleven is ready to set his father free.

He’s not...totally okay. He won’t really be okay until all his friends, all the world, are safe, until the pinpricks over his heart stop hurting him altogether. Until he can stop being the Luminary and just be Eleven. (Is that even possible?) But right now? He wants to do as much as he can. For everyone, not just the necessary stops along the way.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr under the same username, and I have a bit of dq11 spoiler stuff at eleven-of-light over there, because my friends are waiting on the switch version and we all know how tumblr is.
> 
> Like I said, I've got a couple more ideas buzzing around my head for this fandom, and god knows this fandom needs more content, so I'm sure you'll see more of me!


End file.
